


The Undiscovered

by DoubleNegative



Series: The Locker Room: Check Please! ficlets [8]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Established Relationship, I'm just trying to think about privacy in the context of a relationship, I'm not trying to claim that the closet is great here, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Secret Relationship, esp a relationship involving a public figure, implied background Lardo/Shitty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 06:46:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11225526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleNegative/pseuds/DoubleNegative
Summary: Not all of it is for the world, but perhaps not all of it has to be.





	The Undiscovered

It isn’t always so bad, the secrecy. Bitty doesn’t read celebrity gossip, as a rule (guilty exception: Beyonce), but like everyone else, he’s aware of it: its viciousness, its casual, callous disregard for people’s private lives. Bitty learned years ago that secrecy can be a muzzle and a cage, but he’s learning now that it can provide a refuge, too.

This thing they have--this love--has already grown big enough to fill a lifetime, and yet it fits comfortably in such small places: the bed of a pickup truck, the confines of an apartment kitchen, a king-sized mattress, the space between their two mouths.

It slots into the pantry, their love, between neatly-labeled canisters of flour, and rests in the fridge among sticks of butter. It curls between a hockey glove and a stick, and dusts the surface of a puck like ice shavings.

It’s made to linger in the cupped palms of Bitty’s hands, to cling to his fingers like sticky dough and stain his lips like blackberry juice. It’s made to scratch pleasantly against his bare skin with Jack’s stubble, and to fill his mouth like sweet tea, like laughter. It’s quiet and greenly-growing and intimate and _theirs_.

Which is not to say--

Well. Bitty still has one foot in the closet, just as he always has, and that will never be a comfortable place to live. He’s...not thrilled about it, not ever, and once a month or so he’ll get tipsy with Lardo and let himself be properly, loudly angry about it. He wants to show Jack off and let Jack show _him_ off. He wants to hold hands in public. He wants to go to events with Jack and slip an arm around Jack’s waist, rise up on his toes to kiss his cheek when Jack snags him the last mini crabcake.

So yes, it chafes. It will always chafe, like a shoe that doesn’t fit or a shirt too tight in the collar. Frankly, Bitty would worry if it _didn’t_.

In the meantime, Bitty eyes the headlines--other people’s headlines--while he waits in line at the grocery store. No one can dodge the speculation, or the telephoto lenses. That much is clear. There is no frown that cannot be twisted into an impending divorce, no smile that does not speak of a secret affair. Everything seems more tawdry in brightly-colored, breathless capitals. But even those couples must have had their shuffling dances in the living room, their borrowed sweatshirts and red wine in souvenir mugs--their love that twined around their fingers like locks of hair. _Inside sources confirm it!_ Those moments, if they ever existed, don’t survive the headlines--too nuanced for the glare of the spotlight and too esoteric for the broader audience.

They survive just fine, though, shared over cups of coffee, the words mingling with the rising steam. It’s still life-altering, still unutterably freeing, when it’s just Bitty and Lardo, leaning towards each other over the tiny tables at Annie’s and trying to find the words for the way they feel when they pull on a borrowed, oversized hoodie straight from the dryer, or see two toothbrushes tumbled together on the counter. Two sets of breakfast dishes in the sink to match the two pillows on the bed.

Mundane and life-altering, too large to comprehend but small enough to fit between their intertwined fingers. Not all of it is for the world, but perhaps not all of it needs to be.

**Author's Note:**

> This is me trying to fumble my way through thinking about--hm. The desire for privacy at odds with the need to live your life openly? How that's complicated by homophobia and heteronormative expectations, and the challenges that come with a degree of celebrity? How do you live honestly while protecting the parts of your life that deserve to be protected? If knowledge is a gift, does everyone deserve it? ~~How do I get off on being such a pretentious bastard when all I really want to do is write rather floral prose about the mundane things that we build our lives around?~~
> 
> Anyway, the title's from the Monkees, "Me & Magdalena": _I know everything lost will be recovered / when we drift into the arms of the undiscovered._
> 
> check me out on tumblr @ [one thousand hurrahs](http://www.onethousandhurrahs.tumblr.com/). I'm usually less of an annoying sap than this. Probably.


End file.
